Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The spreading drone curriculum is a sign of the coming normalization of drones in American life.

May 2, 2012

For all the attention given to U.S.
law enforcement’s interest in adopting drones, the biggest users turn
out to be not police departments, but universities. We learned this last
week, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation forced the Federal
Aviation Administration to reveal that it had approved 25 universities to
fly drones in U.S. airspace. Not that universities were waiting on the
FAA to begin working in the field: Last fall, Kansas State University
created a degree in unmanned aviation. So far, 30 undergraduates have
signed up.

The spreading drone
curriculum is, for better and worse, a sign of the coming normalization
of drones in American life. Interviews with university officials
revealed widespread excitement about the possibilities of unmanned
aviation technology, which has the potential to transform fields like
agriculture and disaster response. The U.S. military, however, is
funding parts of this academic research, and so are leading defense
contractors. Whether their intentions are as pure as the universities’
is an open question. READ MORE